The biggest obstacles to transparency in Latin America and the Caribbean are the region’s enduring culture of secrecy, the infrequent use of right-to-information laws and the lack of training on how to use them effectively, according to the journalists and researchers from the continent who gathered on Nov. 8 and 9 at the University of Texas at Austin for the 11th Austin Forum on Journalism in the Americas’ organized by the Knight Center. Read more »

Of the 124,394 applications received during the first 18 months since Brazil’s new Law of Access to Information (LAI) went into effect, 5.15 percent came from journalists, according to Brazil’s Inspector General Jorge Hage. Read more »